A Social Experiment

Production Statement:

For this final Media Authoring project in Digital Technology and Culture 355 at Washington State University Vancouver, I am supposed to design a narrative website with several different possible guidelines. I spent the whole Thanksgiving break trying to find a topic when the guidelines were so open that there was an unlimited number of ideas I could have come up with. This made choosing a topic incredibly hard for me. I had a long list of mediocre ideas that I equally liked, but I personally could not just pick one. The deadline was in two weeks so I had to pick a topic quick because web design is very time consuming. Just then it hit me! Since this is a class about digital technology and culture, I could create a social experiment where I find out if it is really a good idea to ask the public (or my Facebook friends) to come up with an idea for me. I came up with the idea that it would be a contest of Facebook friend's ideas and I would eventually pick a winner. The problem with social media is, these friends could come up with anything. Maybe they want to find me a good idea? Maybe they will pick bad ideas on purpose? Maybe they will pick ideas that make me look like a fool at WSU? How can I trust them? All I knew is I had to pick a topic fast and this would be the big ice-breaker. So I decided to post my idea of them coming up with the topic with all the project guidelines attached. Keep in mind, this was posted right after a horrifying election with a twisted outcome as Trump became our new president of the United States of America. People seemed to follow along nicely, but some of the ideas made me nervous of the outcome. I feel very frustrated because I still don't understand how to make a two column site. I have tried so many different possibilities and every time I float content, the content jumps out of the div it's in and into the nav bar. It seems like I can't do two different formats on one style sheet. I meant for the facebook post to read on the left and my comments on the contest page to be on the right. I love web design when it works, but my blood boils when it doesn't work for an unknown reson. I don't like picking one class for all images because I want images in different places. Oh well. Here is the same old one column site. Have fun scrolling up and down to read the story.